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There are two issues here that most commentary about this case seems to be happy to conflate: - Is he guilty - Should he be executed These are independent qu

There are two issues here that most commentary about this case seems to be happy to conflate: - Is he guilty - Should he be executed These are independent questions. One is a question of fact, and there seems to be almost no credible reason to doubt his guilt. The other is a question of ethics and policy. As for your argument on why the death penalty is barbaric, it is not a valid argument. Reductio ad absurdum, your argument implies that every punishment is barbaric, because all punishment is the result of people's 'misplaced confidence' in their opinions. So if the death penalty is barbaric, it's certainly not because of the reason you say. Don't take that as an attempt to justify the death penalty. I believe that almost all the prison sentences handed out in the US greatly exceed the severity of the crime being punished. I can't understand why any prison sentence would be for longer than 5 years in those cases where there is no chance of a repeat offense, no matter what the crime was. I also can't understand why we would ever want to let someone out of state supervision (prison or other) if there is a very high chance they would commit additional crimes if released.

afandian 11y ago
You can't give someone their life back. Nearly any other punishment can be stopped.
- justin_vanw 11y ago
  That's basically true, but maybe it is pretty simplistic. For example, there are tons of people in prison for 5 years, 20 years, lifetimes that don't have the intelligence, resources, or opportunity to 'have their punishment stopped'. They will serve out their time despite being innocent, and despite not getting the death sentence. It in theory could be stopped, since it's not irreversible, but it will not be stopped and nothing will be done. I find it hard to believe that a form of punishment is more just or better in any other way because it 'can, but actually won't be, stopped'.
  - ghostDancer 11y ago
    There's always a possibility to correct the mistake but with death penalty there's no way back. You are telling that if you find you have a deadly disease you won't try a treatment cause in the end you are going to die anyway.
- wtbob 11y ago
  You're right that you can't get someone his life back: you can't give back someone the empty years he spent in prison; you can't remove the pain and agony of years removed from polite society; you can't remove the cruelty and abuse he experienced from other prisoners. Punishment's unpleasant (that's its nature); death and imprisonment are unpleasant. And yet, there are crimes which deserve death. Not to execute vicious murderers, rapists & traitors is a profound miscarriage of justice.
  - drabiega 11y ago
    Well, you can't just execute those people. You either execute no one or you execute some innocent people along with the 'deserving'. You think it is more just to kill the innocent than simple imprison the 'deserving' for life?
    - wtbob 11y ago
      > You either execute no one or you execute some innocent people along with the 'deserving'. Likewise with imprisonment. Innocents will die in prison even if they don't die on the gallows. > You think it is more just to kill the innocent than simple imprison the 'deserving' for life? Those aren't the choices: the choices are to be just in execution of the depraved (and unjust in accidentally executing the innocent) or to be unjust in imprisoning the depraved (and unjust in accidentally imprisoning the innocent). IMHO the justice delta between executing & imprisoning the truly evil is greater than that between accidentally executing & imprisoning the innocent.
  - toothbrush 11y ago
    > Not to execute vicious murderers, rapists & traitors is a profound miscarriage of justice. > Not to murder murderers, ... is a profound miscarriage of justice. There, FTFY.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    > Not to execute vicious murderers, rapists & traitors is a profound miscarriage of justice. That's a minority position. At least 100 countries don't use the death penalty at all. Another 50 countries have a death penalty but haven't executed anyone for at least 10 years. The 30 to 40 countries left are a list of oppressive regimes or countries with corrupt justice systems or justice systems that do not comply with human rights laws. It's more likely that the US is in violation of human rights laws than all those other countries have profound miscarriages of justice.
Joeri 11y ago
The thing that makes capital punishment barbaric is that it's the equivalent of cutting off a thief's hand. It's a naked form of punishment, that seeks only to punish, not to repair or restitute, and which causes irreversible and grave damage. There is a simple alternative here for the truly guilty: life imprisonment and forced restitution (letting someone work to pay off their debt to society). I can only see two reasons to have capital punishment at all: bloodlust, and cost cutting (avoiding the expense of imprisonment). Either of those have no place in an enlightened justice system which aims to repair the damage done, not exacerbate it.
- slazaro 11y ago
  > cost cutting (avoiding the expense of imprisonment) I remember reading that the opposite is actually true. All the cost of trials, retrials, etc. is apparently more than housing the inmate for life.
Lawtonfogle 11y ago
Because the first issue can never be 100%, the second is never a 'should'. Even cases where the convicted admitted guilt have later ended with the convicted being found innocent.
philwelch 11y ago
These are not two independent questions, it turns out. When you are acting upon a judgment of fact, one's certainty in that judgment is a deciding factor in the severity of the action one takes in responding to it. For example, suppose you have a family friend, Randall, who is accused of being a child molester. If you are perhaps 5% certain that Randall is a child molester, you would be justified in not letting your children stay at his house unattended. Just to be safe. If you are 51% certain that Randall is a child molester, that's more certain than not, but 49% is still "reasonable doubt". Ok, let's say we're about 90% certain Randall is a child molester, which is probably enough to get a jury to convict. 1 out of 10 times, that's a false conviction, but that's ok because people can be released from prison and dropped from the sex offender registry if it turns out they were innocent. Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that we agree that child molesters should get the death penalty. What level of certainty is needed before we kill Randall? Surely more than 90%, or else 1 out of 10 people we kill will be innocent, and while that's an acceptable margin for imprisonment, it's probably not good enough for doing something completely final and irreversible. So does the level of certainty have to be 99%--so that 1 in 100 executed inmates is innocent? 99.9%--perhaps 1 out of 1000 is a more palatable rate of innocent people being executed? 99.99% then? The question isn't whether someone is guilty, the question is whether we are confident enough in his guilt to take the risk of killing an innocent man. "Is he guilty?" isn't a binary question of fact, it's a question of certainty and implicit in that question of certainty is the acceptance of killing some innocent people as well. The more nines we need to kill someone, the fewer people are left as candidates for the death penalty. Getting those nines means an exponential increase in legal costs. It also means spreading the fixed costs of execution infrastructure over a smaller number of executions. At some point, either you have to stomach a lot of innocent people being executed or the death penalty just becomes completely impractical, even if you start from the assumption that it's morally justified.
- justin_vanw 11y ago
  Yes, you are absolutely right. I should have said the question the articles are conflating are: - Is he guilty? - Should we have a death penalty?

afandian 11y ago

You can't give someone their life back. Nearly any other punishment can be stopped.

justin_vanw 11y ago
That's basically true, but maybe it is pretty simplistic. For example, there are tons of people in prison for 5 years, 20 years, lifetimes that don't have the intelligence, resources, or opportunity to 'have their punishment stopped'. They will serve out their time despite being innocent, and despite not getting the death sentence. It in theory could be stopped, since it's not irreversible, but it will not be stopped and nothing will be done. I find it hard to believe that a form of punishment is more just or better in any other way because it 'can, but actually won't be, stopped'.
- ghostDancer 11y ago
  There's always a possibility to correct the mistake but with death penalty there's no way back. You are telling that if you find you have a deadly disease you won't try a treatment cause in the end you are going to die anyway.
wtbob 11y ago
You're right that you can't get someone his life back: you can't give back someone the empty years he spent in prison; you can't remove the pain and agony of years removed from polite society; you can't remove the cruelty and abuse he experienced from other prisoners. Punishment's unpleasant (that's its nature); death and imprisonment are unpleasant. And yet, there are crimes which deserve death. Not to execute vicious murderers, rapists & traitors is a profound miscarriage of justice.
- drabiega 11y ago
  Well, you can't just execute those people. You either execute no one or you execute some innocent people along with the 'deserving'. You think it is more just to kill the innocent than simple imprison the 'deserving' for life?
  - wtbob 11y ago
    > You either execute no one or you execute some innocent people along with the 'deserving'. Likewise with imprisonment. Innocents will die in prison even if they don't die on the gallows. > You think it is more just to kill the innocent than simple imprison the 'deserving' for life? Those aren't the choices: the choices are to be just in execution of the depraved (and unjust in accidentally executing the innocent) or to be unjust in imprisoning the depraved (and unjust in accidentally imprisoning the innocent). IMHO the justice delta between executing & imprisoning the truly evil is greater than that between accidentally executing & imprisoning the innocent.
- toothbrush 11y ago
  > Not to execute vicious murderers, rapists & traitors is a profound miscarriage of justice. > Not to murder murderers, ... is a profound miscarriage of justice. There, FTFY.
- DanBC 11y ago
  > Not to execute vicious murderers, rapists & traitors is a profound miscarriage of justice. That's a minority position. At least 100 countries don't use the death penalty at all. Another 50 countries have a death penalty but haven't executed anyone for at least 10 years. The 30 to 40 countries left are a list of oppressive regimes or countries with corrupt justice systems or justice systems that do not comply with human rights laws. It's more likely that the US is in violation of human rights laws than all those other countries have profound miscarriages of justice.

Joeri 11y ago

The thing that makes capital punishment barbaric is that it's the equivalent of cutting off a thief's hand. It's a naked form of punishment, that seeks only to punish, not to repair or restitute, and which causes irreversible and grave damage. There is a simple alternative here for the truly guilty: life imprisonment and forced restitution (letting someone work to pay off their debt to society). I can only see two reasons to have capital punishment at all: bloodlust, and cost cutting (avoiding the expense of imprisonment). Either of those have no place in an enlightened justice system which aims to repair the damage done, not exacerbate it.

slazaro 11y ago
> cost cutting (avoiding the expense of imprisonment) I remember reading that the opposite is actually true. All the cost of trials, retrials, etc. is apparently more than housing the inmate for life.

Lawtonfogle 11y ago

Because the first issue can never be 100%, the second is never a 'should'. Even cases where the convicted admitted guilt have later ended with the convicted being found innocent.

philwelch 11y ago

These are not two independent questions, it turns out. When you are acting upon a judgment of fact, one's certainty in that judgment is a deciding factor in the severity of the action one takes in responding to it. For example, suppose you have a family friend, Randall, who is accused of being a child molester. If you are perhaps 5% certain that Randall is a child molester, you would be justified in not letting your children stay at his house unattended. Just to be safe. If you are 51% certain that Randall is a child molester, that's more certain than not, but 49% is still "reasonable doubt". Ok, let's say we're about 90% certain Randall is a child molester, which is probably enough to get a jury to convict. 1 out of 10 times, that's a false conviction, but that's ok because people can be released from prison and dropped from the sex offender registry if it turns out they were innocent. Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that we agree that child molesters should get the death penalty. What level of certainty is needed before we kill Randall? Surely more than 90%, or else 1 out of 10 people we kill will be innocent, and while that's an acceptable margin for imprisonment, it's probably not good enough for doing something completely final and irreversible. So does the level of certainty have to be 99%--so that 1 in 100 executed inmates is innocent? 99.9%--perhaps 1 out of 1000 is a more palatable rate of innocent people being executed? 99.99% then? The question isn't whether someone is guilty, the question is whether we are confident enough in his guilt to take the risk of killing an innocent man. "Is he guilty?" isn't a binary question of fact, it's a question of certainty and implicit in that question of certainty is the acceptance of killing some innocent people as well. The more nines we need to kill someone, the fewer people are left as candidates for the death penalty. Getting those nines means an exponential increase in legal costs. It also means spreading the fixed costs of execution infrastructure over a smaller number of executions. At some point, either you have to stomach a lot of innocent people being executed or the death penalty just becomes completely impractical, even if you start from the assumption that it's morally justified.

justin_vanw 11y ago
Yes, you are absolutely right. I should have said the question the articles are conflating are: - Is he guilty? - Should we have a death penalty?